Dear Editor,
Each day my students and I look around Roanoke City and County and see another grove of trees downed, another ridgeline sprouting construction, more greenspace eradicated by development.
With every “little” commercial project (which developers call “balance”), countless God-given treasures are quietly lost to this area. Forever.
Fresh air. Quietness. The ability to see the starry universe at night. Songbirds. Fireflies. A sense of beauty and spiritual depth. A knowledge that life is more immense, majestic and dignified than human materialism.
It is a windfall that Roanoke City has kept its one green mountain uncommercialized. In an overdeveloped world, this mountain sanctuary is revealing itself as an amazing spiritual treasure few cities anywhere can offer.
Meanwhile, almost annually, some group of developers proposes to carve and construct Mill Mountain into their personal vision of prosperity.
It’s almost surreal, in our day of precious vanishing greenspace, that local leaders take seriously each proposal threatening this one remaining refuge. Just because various financially-powerful interests value materialism over nature, city leaders invariably consider giving away Roanoke’s birthright, literally, for a “mess of potage.”
Some Roanoke leaders say that a conservation easement on Mill Mountain would “tie the hands of the future.” What do they think development does?
Americans thrill to visit Yosemite, the Tetons, Yellowstone or Mount Rogers. We never regret that courageous visionaries “tied” developers’ hands back from commercializing these refuges.
I’m praying that Council locate some moral courage and protect the mountaintop for good. Literally!
Judy Hawks, Roanoke
